Saturday, January 28, 2006

Girls don't do technology, right? The Video Cassette recorder, the DVD player, the Games Console, the Freeview box, the radio alarm, the plug; all these things were designed by men, for men, and the female brain is far, far too finely tuned to important, emotional stuff to cope with all the "jargon" - correct?

Ah, but now what happens? Now - more fool us - we have designed a fiendishly complicated electronic device which allows you to chat more! Suddenly, technology is no problem. All at once - who knew? - you're all bells and whistles, you ladies. Twenty-minute monologues on the bus - at 90dB, of course - about Julie from Personnel's cat, or whether Siobhan fancies the Maths teacher. Whole afternoons spent huddled on park benches with your FCUK sweater over your knees, clicking away on little keypads faster than any rational human could think a coherent sentence. Clutching those little plastic-and-silicon talismans in the kind of unendingly rapt embrace of which your "unromantic" partner probably only dreams. Not for you the inconvenience of reflexive feminine befuddlement when challenged with GPRS, SMS, 3G, mp3/polyphonic and more weight of arcane nomenclature, of the kind that would send you into theatrical yawning fits if attached to any other useful device!

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Could someone please explain, in simple words, what the movie Munich is trying to say? It spent two-and-a-half hours trying to bash its message into my cranium, to no avail. Sure, I got the basic points about self-identity ("home") and the cyclical nature of revenge, but there's got to be more than that, surely?

Steven Spielberg tends to make profound movies about profound subjects (War, Holocaust, Racism) and jolly movies about silly things (aliens, dinosaurs, man-eating sharks, possessed petrol tankers). But despite the grim subject material, Munich is remarkable for being actually quite easy to watch, and the violence all seems to occur at arm's length. Given the limitlessly contentious nature of the subject, the movie's morality wisely leaves space for the audience to pick its own heroes and villains, but such equivocation - while laudable on one level - leaves the authorial voice so much the weaker. It's not that I'm expecting answers, just that I'm grappling to understand what this movie thinks the questions are.

Most perplexing of all is the device of having the protagonist, Abner, frequently endure "flashbacks" of the Munich massacre, despite not having been there. This leads to a giddy, spectacular and (unfortunately) utterly bewildering denoument as we watch the final gruesome moments of the victims unfold in Abner's head, while he has sex with his wife...? Okay, I can make the link between orgasms and explosions, but I'm fairly sure that's not what The Big Berg's getting at. He's cleverer than that.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

It may look to you like a radioactive porcupine, or a slow-shutter shot of a firework, or a negative close-up of my chin. In fact, this is part of an installation by Simon Fenoulhet at the Glyn Vivian art gallery, Swansea.

You're not supposed to take photos, actually - but with the flash off, who's gonna know? Anyway, I heartily recommend a viewing if you're in the area - and why wouldn't you be, after all?

Once you're all cultured-up at the GV, you'll feel a lot less bad about languishing in the depths of one of Swansea's many oblivion vendors and drinking just a little too much cheap beer.